Author
Hafiz A. Pasha*
Abstract
Pakistan is considered as a country with relatively low income inequality, as measured by the data from the Household Integrated Economic Surveys (HIES) of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. A comparison is made of the distribution of agricultural income, earned income, housing rents, personal bank deposits and expenditure on electricity with the distributions obtained directly from primary sources like the Labor Force Survey, Agricultural Census, Population and Housing Census, SBP and NEPRA with the distributions in the HIES. The conclusion generally is that inequality is grossly understated in the HIES. Accordingly, recommendations are made for improving the design and conduct of future household surveys.
